A Russian judge has adjourned proceedings on the trial of Nadiya Savchenko, and the court awaits the full verdict on Tuesday which is expected to be guilty. Savchenko pled not guilty, saying she had never killed unarmed people.
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Cameron, who has staked his political future on keeping Britain inside the European Union, was due to face the House of Commons.
Savchenko, who often wears Ukrainian costume in the courtroom, has been openly contemptuous of the judge and prosecutors, denouncing them as “idiots” and raising her middle finger in defiance. Deputies were called late on Thursday to a home because a child had burns.
Savchenko, who was fighting as a volunteer against the Russia-backed separatists, accuses the rebels of kidnapping her and taking her across the border to Russian Federation where she was jailed and charged as an accessory to murder.
Angry Ukrainians have pelted the Russian embassy in Kiev with eggs over her plight, while Russians have picketed the Ukrainian embassy in Moscow demanding justice for the dead journalists.
A six months trial of Ukrainian retired officer Nadezhda Savchenko, 34, ended today.
Shaun Walker, Moscow correspondent for The Guardian, posted on Twitter that the audio feed of the judge was barely audible and that defense lawyers appear bored as the sentence was being read. However, Russian officials emphasized that they would not even talk about a possible prisoner exchange, not unless the verdict is already in. Following her capture in June 2014 she was elected to the Ukrainian parliament, and is a delegate in absentia to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.
Midway into the trial the judge turned down her lawyers’ plea to ask the cell-phone company to trace her calls on the day of the mortar attack that should prove that she was a few kilometers (miles) away from there. She has also been on several hunger strikes.
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“Savchenko’s release is envisaged in the Minsk agreements”, said spokesman Svyatoslav Tseholko, referring to the internationally mediated process to regulate the conflict in eastern Ukraine.
